


hope the stars will still be aligned

by the hyacinth girl (arguendo)



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 11:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2579192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arguendo/pseuds/the%20hyacinth%20girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another world, the fires are rising. A girl finds her way at a flea market.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hope the stars will still be aligned

Today Anna is nine years old.

As a gift, Honami takes her to a special kind of market. She fists her hand against a leg and listens as Honami explains: people call it a 'flea market', though there are no fleas sold, only wooden panels and paintings and trinkets bronzed with age. It is outdoors—rumbling and reeking, earthy. People come crowding all around, skin brushing skin; their bodies crackle with talk and thought. The air's alive, all breeze and pulse, and Anna thinks: it's good to be outside. They don't go out as often these days, but today it's all right. Here their breaths are clean of tar and scorch. The skies hang pale, pearled and open. Her skin's cool under daylight.

Honami leads. She's come before and knows her way, turning past stall and stall again. Glimpses of one open spread after another as she guides Anna along, skimming flashes of color in the gaps between the strides of passersby. After a while, she doesn't turn to follow them.

Nobody knows when another street might be laid to ruin, after all. It's enough to be here while they can.

("But I do know," she said once to her aunt, who sighed and smoothed her sleeves.

"Anna," Honami said gently, "you don't have to take everything onto your shoulders, either.")

The crowd is heavy and stubborn around her. It's a strange thought—and it's only then that Anna remembers her knees, her fists and elbows pushing through the forest of human limbs. Her legs ache heavy, caught in a lope she's only just noticed. She's been running, she thinks, and the thought clutches at her; the sensation hangs in her mind like a jewel.

She didn't mean to run—can think of Honami's hand left empty behind her, her aunt's fretful voice surging above the crowd. Still, she _pushes_ forward, and under little elbows and boots, the restless throng breaks open for her.

It's a thin picnic blanket on the grass, with metal designs splayed across the greying checkers. Metal's been worked into simple rings and bracelets and necklaces: shaped into caught gears, circles twined into one another strung on leather. Their scattering's haphazard; a ring's nearly sunk through one of the larger holes. Any of them would be too big for her. Even Honami's wrist, she thinks, would be too thin—would see them slip off and rolling away on the train. Only a man's wrist would fit them, but it doesn't matter. She doesn't need to wear them.

It's warm here. She's warm.

"Ah," she says, as Honami comes thudding to a breathless stop behind her. "They're pretty."

Her aunt stills as the seller brightens. "Are they?" he says. He sounds nearly surprised by the compliment, but the curve of his smile alights like a wing and he goes half-sprawling over his own wares at once. "I just started making them last month. Ah, and it took such a time to find metalworkers who'd let me into their shops to use the torches—"

"You're an amateur, then?" Honami interrupts, with a teacher's delicate inflection. She's caught her breath and a thought of gifts. Here stands her aunt: sharp-wristed, her jaw drawn sharp like the line of a crane's throat, earnest and fixed on a bargain if she must.

The seller only laughs and spreads his hands. "There's a saying, isn't there? A jack of all trades, master of nothing! Everyone who knows me's ashamed. But you came running for something," he says to Anna, "didn't you?"

They both turn to her, then.

Anna does not flush, though she thinks that perhaps she should. It is a thing that girl-children do. Honami, she thinks, would like it if she behaved more like a child now and then—which is not to say that her aunt does not love her, but there is love which distinguishes and love which clasps things it can hold onto. And then there is unconditional love, which says it does not matter what you are, there's no need to remember your name or your family or the way you wish for fuller skirts or might not want real dolls to play with or how you roll your marbles in the dark for colors to see. None of that matters, because you are here. Love which accepts but never tries to cling, too uncertain to touch. You are here, and so you are loved.

Love which wants you to be one kind of light or flame. Love which could understand what you are. Anna thinks, wonders.

But the seller's tilted his head to her, quizzical and open, and she loses the thought. He has a sweet sort of smile: the kind that people want to smile back to. Anna does not know how. She reaches into her pocket instead—clasps her marbles tight between her fingers. The vision shivers up through bone, and she sees—she _knows_. "You," she says. "You should be somewhere else."

"Should I?"

His eyes are wide, but it's an audience's look. 

"There's a fire," she says, louder—feels Honami stiffen beside her with a few other passersby. Their whispers rise before they rustle away. _Fire's_ grown to be an unpopular word. It's got stories clinging to the syllable now: warehouses to rubble and ashes, a man roaming in the dark with light and scars trailing in his wake.

She says the rest anyway, determinedly: "It's warm—it's supposed to be warm. That's what he wanted. He waited for you—for so long."

He cocks his head, a boy reeling an old memory out of dark waters. "Well," the jewelry-maker says, "it's summer right now. I guess everyone really wants—"

" _No._ " If there is any word she means, it's this—but he doesn't understand; he's looking at her with the corners of his mouth still tipped up, a caricature of brightness. A seller's smile, waiting to name a price. "You have to find him. He was your king first." But the vision is nothing she understands, and less still anything he sees. She says, a little fiercely, "He can't belong to anyone else, now."

The jewelry-maker studies her. The look's a little too guileless, like marbles caught between his lashes. "Ah, you know," he says, "You may be right! I remember saying something like that once, a long time ago."

But he's sweeping aside his things as he speaks, deft-fingered and sweetly smiling. They've gathered too much attention; nobody wants to stay for the results when the city's learned the dangers of too much noise. The marble trembles in her fingers like sight. A thought rises in her throat like something dreamt.

He might be, Anna thinks, one of the prettiest people she has ever seen. Just like this, folding away his raggedy blanket with sunlight tangling through his hair and all his makings in a heap at her feet.

She thinks: drifting like this, he'll live a long time.

With the blanket rolled up, the seller gets to his feet. He isn't a tall man after all—he doesn't even need to bend to ruffle her hair. "If you know that," he says, "then you know it was all a _very_ long time ago. What I told him, then—it was just a game. That's all."

Anna tilts her chin up. "What was his name?" she says.

His answering gaze is bright, and gentle: it reflects her as water does, in light and warmthless curves.

"His name?" Totsuka Tatara echoes. "You know—I'm not really sure."

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in July 2013 on a bottle of wine and a late-night conversation about Totsuka's attitude towards his old hobbies. It's quite a rough thing now, but there's still something I like about it.


End file.
